“One of the more obvious differences between modern humans is skin color. We make crude visual distinctions and effectively meaningless categorizations based on average skin tones, such as black or white. The question of race is explored in depth in… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“none of the ways in which we talk about race today stands up to the scrutiny that genetics has enabled. Families are too untidy, human history is too convoluted, people too motile. The deck has been shuffled and reshuffled. Genetics… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“The unglamorous truth is that there are but a handful of uniquely human traits that we have clearly demonstrated are adaptations evolved to thrive… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“Except if you’re of European descent. Your lactase continues to work throughout your life. This unusual phenomenon is called lactase persistence, and although a… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“One fifth of people alive a millennium ago in Europe are the ancestors of no one alive today. Their lines of descent petered out… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“Nineteen teeth from twelve sixth-century plague pits in Aschheim near Munich provided the source of the Code of Justinian. In among the ancient human… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“There are dozens of documented cases of Roma or Irish Travelers being falsely accused of stealing children over the twentieth century, and back through… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“There’s a cave in this hinterland of Siberia, called Denisova, named after an eighteenth-century eremite called Denis who lived there.” — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“brain activity in a heartbeat. All of that says Richard. But the DNA in consort with the paper trail of a genealogy available only… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge . . . says Darwin in The Descent of Man, his study of the evolution of… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“crunching. The amount of introgression from Neanderthals is proportionally lower on the modern X than on the rest of the chromosomes. X chromosomes are… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“Mind you, Darwin fretted about a lot of stuff, especially his health, his kids, and maybe with just cause. On occasion he would write… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“Pedigree is a word derived from the middle French phrase pied de grue—the crane’s foot—as the digits and hallux spread from a single joint… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“The oldest genome of a European comes from a 37,000-year-old square-jawed man who washed up on the banks of the mighty River Don in… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“By 5500 BCE, we were making cheese. Sieves and pottery colanders resembling modern cheese strainers had been found in Poland, and in 2012, again,… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
“Amylase digests starchy, carbohydrate-rich foods, and helps generate glucose from them, which would provide much needed energy for the evolving and highly energetic brain.… — Adam Rutherford Copy Share Image
